Wonder. WIP

[PompiPompi]

Hello All,

I am the developer of "Labyrinthica: The Quest Of Lima" which getter77 have kindely mentioned over here.
I want to present you with the new game I am working on. It's called "Wonder".
Wonder is actually a sort of RPG Maker or RPG Engine. It is a program to generate games or adventures.

I am working on a first playable game using this "engine". It will feature an adventure playable either as single player or multiplayer. My inspirations to this game are from both Ultima and Miracle Warriors.
For multiplayer there is a War\Peace system in which you can be friendly or hostile to other players. You won't know who is in peace with you, so there is an element of trust and betrayel in multiplayer.

How is it related to RogueLike? Well, it has a potential to generate RogueLike games as well. Time is divided to steps, and in each step all the creatures in the game move simultanously. You attack by simpley standing next to someone who you are in war with.

Well, enough talking, here is a youtube video. And I will be glad to hear your opinions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVtj7tK7sYA

[getter77]

An interesting direction to go in, as the more good Engines out there---the better.   

I would think the combat mechanic as currently outlined would need some tinkering in a Roguelike context though, as it might get tedious to declare war on each and every swarming enemy unless there is a quick and easy way of handling it.

Do you aim to go in a commercial direction with the Wonder engine itself, just the game made using it, or another direction entirely?

[PompiPompi]

I will elaborate on the War\Peace system.
There is a general state and a specific state. The general state can be one of three: Peace, Guard or War.
Let's forget about the specific state for a moment.
Peace means you never attack anyone, no matter what. Guard means you attack only those who attack you. And war means you attack everyone.
The specific state is either peace or war, and it's aimed at a specific player(usually).
If your specific state to someone is war, then what matters are all the three general states that I mentioned above.
If your specific state to someone is Peace, then:
The general Peace state remains the same. But the general Guard and War states are overriden by the specific Peace state and you won't attack that specific player even if your general state is War.

So basically you start with specific War to everyone, and if you change your general state to War, you will attack everyone.

I hope my explaination is not confusing.

My "business plan" is to make the engine free and some free games with it. And if it turns popular enough I could make one big adventure with the engine that will be not free. But people will be free to create their own adventures.
Though, it's not set in stone.

Edit: I understand why you are saying this is problematic with a Rogue game.
The reason it's like that is because currently the engine works for both "Real Time" and multiplayer. "Real Time" means that turns or steps are not waiting for the player to make a move, instead they last for only a part of a second.
You just cannot walk on enemies all the time because they constantly move. The reason it is like that is because of multiplayer, and you can't wait for everyone to make a move in multiplayer because it would be too slow.
However, I can make that in single player there will also be an option for a "Rogue Mode", in which the game waits for the player to move and you attack by walking on an enemy. Shouldn't be too hard to have two modes for the same adventure.

[getter77]

I gotcha---pretty well makes sense.  I would recommend perhaps spending some time with the likes of SilverQuest, Deliantra, and Crossfire just to poke around.  Especially SilverQuest, as the Engine at the core of it seems like it may have some examples you'd find useful, as it was adapted to various degrees by sideline projects.

http://www.miragesource.draignet.com/index.php?categoryid=1

[PompiPompi]

Silverquest's downloads seem to be unavailable for now.

[getter77]

Trying this link in particular?  Seems to work at a glance.   If not, you could probably shoot the developer a PM over in the Announcements topic for it and it can be resolved,

http://arwym.com/silverquest/index.php/download/

[PompiPompi]

Server seems to be down.
So it's an online game only?

[getter77]

Indeed it is.  The gist of it was explained in greater detail here:

http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=1305.0

[PompiPompi]

Some WIP screenshot.
People arn't happy with the floating head and with the tiles saying they are too bright.
What do you think?

[getter77]

A floating head of some sort for dialog doesn't strike me as a bad idea at all---character portraits are a tradition with substantial history to them.  The white text on grey background layer does seem like a bit of a rough combo somehow though.  Perhaps you could shoot for, I dunno, a black ink on parchment paper/scroll look instead?  It would seem more apt for the general fantasy setting.

[PompiPompi]

Yea, I am going to change the font into something more "pixely". It will be white with a black outline, which should increase readability.
I wanted to try something different than the usual scroll, that's why I did this rock slab.
Maybe I didn't mention but in the future I intend for the "visual module" to be replaceable. So people could write their own clients.

[getter77]

Hmm...if you could go totally crazy it might be interesting to have the writings as etched/chiseled into the stone slab with a bit of "color paint" to it.

Good idea on allowing for different visual styles to be swapped around.

[PompiPompi]

Here is the hand drawn font I made. It's still needs more work but I decided to show it anyway.
getter77, your idea is really nice, but it could be a lot of work to make it look like that. Especielly because I intentionally limit myself from using certain things.
For instance, I allow transparency, but I won't allow alpha blending. Since it's not very 8-bit like. Although I do allow 24 bit colors, because it would be too much of a hussle to limit myself to a small pallet of colors.

So here is a new screenshot, feedback is welcome.

[getter77]

Better and bigger!  Are you going to shoot for scrolling for longer messages, or something closer to a "page flipping" mechanic for longer instances of text?

[PompiPompi]

Yes, I would need some dialog "paging" for dialogs longer than the dialog box can allow. But I am not concerned about that.
My only concern is that the font is too big for chatting, since in chatting people like to write long sentences.